Sunderland City Council Outline their Automated Telephony Triage Approach Supporting Proportionate Annual Reviews
Sunderland City Council has been using automated telephony to engage with their ASC customers for over 3 years. With a range of scripts covering a number of key ASC areas, their latest service – which is making active contact with over 2,000 service users every year – is focused on supporting a proportionate review approach, in line with guidance from the Chief Social Worker.
Today we hosted an hour and a half long webinar, which was of interest to over 150 people from 80 local authorities, and for those of you who missed it you can request a recording by getting in touch below. The main focus of the session was on how automated calls are actively going out to triage people prior to their 6-week and annual reviews. Sunderland sees this proactive engagement with service users as integral to having reduced their annual review backlog, as well as enabling them to both evidence and support a proportionate annual review approach.
By proactively calling people on a mobile phone or landline – a device people are familiar with and have easy access to – Sunderland is able to ask key questions which determine whether the person’s ASC review needs to be undertaken by a social worker or a more proportionate approach (whether that is by an unqualified worker, a trusted partner or a digital self assessment platform). The answers to the carefully crafted questions allow them to prioritise those people who confirm that they do not feel safe and able in terms of the care they have in place, those who are socially isolated, as well as identify those who did not feel listened to or involved in their care package decisions. Another key benefit of the Contact&Connect calls is the ability to proactively share links to information and advice, and contact numbers to those who confirm that they need them.
This automated telephony approach is a great example of an ‘Alternative Front Door’, as advocated in the Online Needs assessment Good Practice Guide published by DHSC in November 2023, which “sets out the value of using digital online self-assessments to help address long waiting lists, and free up the time of social workers” (Lyn Romeo, Chief Social Worker)
In fact, the session started with a focus on the idea of an alternative front door, and local authorities fed back around their consideration and development of such an approach. The session then progressed through the background and accessibility of automated telephony, Sunderland’s co-design of questions (based on the TLAP I statements) with customer groups, how the technology works and on to the evidence and data the platform collects.
The main headline in terms of the evidence from Sunderland’s live service is that 70% of ASC service users confirm that they do not have an issue in terms of their care and support – and therefore can be reviewed in a proportionate manner – leaving 30% needing a social worker led review.
Certainly from Sunderland’s perspective, being able to actively – and at scale – contact people and then bring their responses in to drive forward their proportionate approach, has led to significant resource and financial savings.
Julie Lynn, Head of Business Development – Adult Social Care, Sunderland City Council said “Although there was initial resistance, Contact&Connect has been really welcomed by our social worker staff. I think we all acknowledge that we have had issues in terms of wait lists particularly for annual reviews in adult social care – some more than most – but this has actually given us a proportionate way of tackling those annual reviews at scale. And we are now managing it in a different way, making sure we do have that qualified social work oversight (for proportionate reviews) in line with the Chief Social Worker’s guidance.”
Working through the detailed business process Sunderland built to underpin the proportionate review approach (a diagram of which is available on request), Julie continued…
“What social workers now realise is that this automated triage approach has given them so much more time and capacity to manage cases, and the complexities of some of the cases more effectively. We are also getting really good feedback from our customers as a result of Contact&Connect, because things are happening in a much more timely way. They are getting the opportunity to feed back to us routinely, and the push out of information, advice and guidance has been really helpful. We are starting to see that the tide is turning as to how people are feeling.”
Local authority colleagues posed a range of questions from the resources required to implement the automated triage and proportionate approach (answer – no additional resources required), questions around workforce deployment, working through existing backlogs and managing backlog risks, engaging with people with learning disabilities, how the services help address the issue of overprovision of care, details around the efficiency savings that Sunderland has calculated (business case available on request), plus having ‘eyes on the customer’.
We also covered how the evidence can be brought into supporting CQC inspections: “For the CQC it provides really valuable data for your self assessment to be able to evidence contact with your customers, what your customers are saying about your services, about being listened to, about being at the heart of the assessment and care planning process and the care provision.”
It was a busy and informative session, with great engagement and feedback. Also covered was how the call data is extracted and combined with other data sources to support contract management and workforce development, and we had a short session from Looking Local around the BetterCare Support online self assessment platform, and the vision of a (already technically possible) joined up approach in terms of telephone triage and signposting of people to online tools where applicable.
There is more on our site about Annual Reviews below, and to request a demo, a recording of this session, a bespoke business case for your annual review cohort – or anything else – just get in touch.
